In my quest to identify valuable resources for IBM Business Partners, I came across another excellent one.

The "2012 Co-Marketing Guide for IBM Business Partners" is an online, user-friendly guide that looks and reads like a small spiral notebook. The color coded tabs make it extremely easy to navigate through the topics which include co-marketing programs, assets, incentives, sales plays, and solutions. The guide has dozens of hotlinks which point to PartnerWorld web pages, and is also a great conduit to funnel users to the new "Co-Marketing Center" where they can create and design their own customized "Ready to Execute" campaigns.

As a staunch advocate of content consolidation and "one-stop-shop" repositories, I highly recommend this new resource, and would encourage you to view the many other resources that are available on the PartnerWorld SMB web page.

How would you feel, as manager in your
company’s IT department, when the marketing people specified, commissioned and
developed an IT application for their needs?

I was driven to ask this question by several ‘customer surveys’ that I have seen come out of the IT departments. An extract from my very favourite is shown here, which while it demonstrates admirable self-confidence it is perhaps not the perfect basis for objective assessment.

It just seems strange to me that an
industry built entirely upon providing specialist expertise to allow others to
deliver their jobs doesn't always feel the need to get specialist advice
itself.

Now, personally, I do believe I know at
least as much about building, delivering and analysing surveys as I do about
technology application. But that is mostly because I know so little about
technology. In both situations I would always welcome expert advice if I need
to get something right.

Even IT listens to the CFO’s people when it
comes to costs and accounting, yet many have potential access to significant
expertise in their marketing people that goes untapped.

This feels important to me simply because
of the all the bad surveying we still see. I suspect that availability of free
services like Survey Monkey leads us to build and do surveys without any real
planning, and without thinking through how we might analyse and use the results
when we have them. Basically a good example of reducing the ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’
cycle down to ‘Do’ - speedy and economic but not usually very effective.

As for the confusion and the wrong results
taken from unrepresentative samples …

For simple, but telling, examples think
about how many ‘customer survey’ results you have seen where in fact it is only
users who have been addressed. It is an important thing, user satisfaction, but
it isn’t customer satisfaction and we need to find out both and act accordingly
on what we find. For example if you have 100% perfect user satisfaction, then
the odds are your customers will think they are spending too much. And you will
frequently see a mix of customers and users asked questions that are not really
targeted at all, just asked because they can. This is often based on the –
misplaced – belief that the more people you ask, then the more accurate the
answer, ignoring the whole ‘sample selection process’.

Take a classic ITSM example, where a
support unit routinely sends questionnaires to those who have made use of the
service desk. This, of course, gives you a satisfaction result amongst those
who have had sufficient problems to make them phone for help. Might you expect
a rather lower score from these people than the ones who have been working
quite happily without the need for support.

We know we need to care more and more about
understanding what our customers – and users and other stakeholders – want and
need. We also need to understand it is not always an easy task to find that
out. There is a whole professional specialism out there that delivers this
service – as service providers ourselves, proud of our professional expertise,
should we recognise that more – and take some better advice before we ‘knock
something up to measure satisfaction?

Maybe you do consult with your internal
experts if you have them, or maybe you buy in expertise. It would be good to
hear if you do.

I recently stumbled upon a great little co-marketing resource for Business Partners . The Mid Market Asset Gallery is a slick and extremely user-friendly one-stop-shop repository for the most recent midmarket advertising and demand generation assets. What I liked most about this tool was its search functionality, which enabled me to easily filter by campaign, asset type or date.

I did a quick search on a topic that is near and dear to me lately - IBM SmartCloud, and I unearthed a very cool downloadable print add that speaks to the ways that IBM and its Business Partners can work with a midmarket business to "take all or part of their IT infrastructure to the cloud".

I would encourage you to check it out to increase your awareness of the various campaigns and drive usage of the assets with your BPs.

People seem to like a thing to be right or
wrong. Yet the older I get the more it seems to me that very few things are
totally right, and that there is rarely only one right answer to real
situations.

I was driven to these thoughts by a really good
posting on Back2ITSM from Stephen Mann about Spiderman and the Avengers. He was
concerned with things that change over time and the danger of being out of date
and therefore no longer correct. You
should read that posting – in fact if you are interested in service management
you should get already be looking at this facebook group – very much the place
to be!

Anyway, I am not going to repeat Stephen’s
words here – rather I want to follow a tangential aspect of right and wrong
that his posting triggered in my mind.

It’s just that I don’t think that right is
always an appropriate idea, and I think too many people in service management
think there is a right answer to every question. Actually, truth be told, if I
risk making it way too clear that I am a grumpy old man, then I think there is
far too much expectation of there being a right answer in most aspects of
modern society.

I don’t know if commitment to that concept of
‘one right way’ is something that we are born with or something we teach our
children. I suspect the latter; certainly it is there at an early age. I recall discussions with my girls about
nursery rhymes. Several versions are around – different recordings,
publications etc inevitably with slightly different words in them. All of my
girls wanted to know which one was the ‘right’ version – certain in their own
minds that one of them must be right, and the others therefore wrong.

The more data and information we ‘enjoy access
to’, then the less chance there is of any one set being ‘right’. I have even heard as an explanation that we
now live in a scientific age – that older attitudes to life were less precise.
And yet I was taught – as a science student – that a solution is right for its
context not necessarily in an absolute sense. I recall one electronics lesson
that has always stuck in my mind and served my in very good stead in my working
life, across a whole range of service management – especially in measurement.

It hinged on the lecturer going through the
week’s assignment which involved working out the effective resistance of several
configurations of components. We had all
(and I mean all, from the clever geeks, to the lazy ones like me) worked it out
using the given resistances of each element in a frighteningly complicated
configuration, and come up with a precise effective value for the combination.
The lecturer drew it on the board, then proceeded to wipe out most elements as ‘not significant’
– left about three components and did the calculation in seconds. We all screamed ‘cheat’! He laughed, reminded
us that the stated resistance of the components is given as ±10%, so there was no point in taking
seriously anything that wouldn’t affect the answer by more than a few percent.

I spoke with the lecturer afterwards and he
admitted they did the same exercise every year to get that very point across.
The right answer is one that fits the circumstances, be that imprecise measures,
limited time, lack of profile with management or whatever situation you
establish you are in.

That lesson about being right enough for the
job is one we are losing with modern technology giving us an answer to
ridiculous precision from input that is
often little more than a guess.

That principle of knowing what is needed before
you deliver is – of course – far more universally true than just being about
measurement. But it is easily forgotten in an age that often delivers more
answers than questions.

Overview: Connect, learn, and share with IBM Tivoli on the development of future
product releases. Learn how you can get open access to release plans, product
roadmaps, sprint demos, and beta code so that you can provide feedback and make
a direct impact on what development teams deliver.

About
The Speakers:

Denny
O’Brien is a manager in the IBM Tivoli strategy and development organization.
In his current role, Denny manages the development and strategy of Service
Management Connect, a community site that provides best practices and
discussion around technical discussion around Tivoli products, and connects
clients and business partners to IBM Tivoli development. Denny also is leading
the transformation within Tivoli to a new transparent development model, which
will give more clients access to future development plans and a bigger voice in
the direction of Tivoli products.

The Official Tivoli User Community is the largest online and
offline organization of Tivoli professionals in the world – home to over 160
local User Communities and dozens of virtual/global groups from 29 countries –
with more than 26,000 members. The TUC community offers Users blogs and
forums for discussion and collaboration, access to the latest whitepapers,
webinars, presentations and research for Users, by Users and the latest
information on Tivoli products. The Tivoli User Community offers the
opportunity to learn and collaborate on the latest topics and issues that
matter most. Membership is complimentary. Join NOW!